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that we had ever had any intention of visiting those parts,
walked into the trap uninvited one evening, when we met
him strolling on the banks of the Vivonne.
‘There are tints in the clouds this evening, violets and
blues, which are very beautiful, are they not, my friend?’ he
said to my father. ‘Especially a blue which is far more floral
than atmospheric, a cineraria blue, which it is surprising to
see in the sky. And that little pink cloud there, has it not just
the tint of some flower, a carnation or hydrangea? Nowhere,
perhaps, except on the shores of the English Channel, where
Normandy merges into Brittany, have I been able to find
such copious examples of what you might call a vegetable
kingdom in the clouds. Down there, close to Balbec, among
all those places which are still so uncivilised, there is a little
bay, charmingly quiet, where the sunsets of the Auge Valley,
those red-and-gold sunsets (which, all the same, I am very
far from despising) seem commonplace and insignificant;
for in that moist and gentle atmosphere these heavenly flow-
er-beds will break into blossom, in a few moments, in the
evenings, incomparably lovely, and often lasting for hours
before they fade. Others shed their leaves at once, and then it
is more beautiful still to see the sky strewn with the scatter-
ing of their innumerable petals, sulphurous yellow and rosy
red. In that bay, which they call the Opal Bay, the golden
sands appear more charming still from being fastened, like
fair Andromeda, to those terrible rocks of the surrounding
coast, to that funereal shore, famed for the number of its
wrecks, where every winter many a brave vessel falls a vic-
tim to the perils of the sea. Balbec! the oldest bone in the

200 Swann’s Way